It was in 1871. Fabre had lived twenty years at Avignon. This date
constitutes an important landmark in his career, since it marks the precise
moment of his final rupture with the University.
At this time the preoccupations of material life were more pressing than
ever, and it was then that he devoted himself entirely and with
perseverance to the writing of those admirable works of introduction and
initiation, in which he applied himself to rendering science accessible to
the youngest minds, and employed all his profound knowledge to the thorough
teaching of its elements and its eternal laws.
To this ungrateful task--ungrateful, but in reality pleasurable, so
strongly had he the vocation, the feeling, and the genius of the teacher--
Fabre applied himself thenceforth with all his heart, and for nine years
never lifted his hand.
How insipid, how forbidding were the usual classbooks, the second-rate
natural histories above all, stuffed with dry statements, with raw
knowledge, which brought nothing but the memory into play! How many
youthful faces had grown pale above them!
What a contrast and a deliverance in these little books of Fabre's, so
clear, so luminous, so simple, which for the first time spoke to the heart
and the understanding; for "work which one does not understand disgusts
one." (5/1.)
To initiate others into science or art, it is not enough to have understood
them oneself; it is not enough even that one should be an artist or a
scientist. Scientists of the highest flight are sometimes very unskilful
teachers, and very indifferent hands at explaining the alphabet. It is not
given to the first comer to educate the young; to understand how to
identify his understanding with theirs, to measure their powers. It is a
matter of instinct and good sense rather than of memory or erudition, and
Fabre, who had never in his life been the pupil of any one, could better
than any remember the phases through which his mind had passed, could
recollect by what detours of the mind, by what secret labours of thought,
by what intuitive methods he had succeeded in conquering, one by one, all
the difficulties in his path, and in gradually attaining to knowledge.
It is wonderful to watch the mastery with which he conducts his
demonstrations, the simplest as well as the most involved, singling out the
essential, little by little evoking the sense of things, ingeniously
seeking familiar examples, finding comparisons, and employing picturesque
and striking images, which throw a dazzling light upon the obscurest
question or the most difficult problem. How in such matters can one
dispense with figurative speech, when one is reduced, as a rule, to an
inability to show the things themselves, but only their images and their
symbols?
Follow him, for example, in the "The Sky" (5/2.), which seems to thrill
with the ardent and comprehensive genius of a Humboldt, and admire the ease
with which he surmounts all the difficulties and smooths the way for the
vast voyage on which he conducts you, past the infinity of the suns and the
stars in their millions, scintillating in the cold air of night, to descend
once more to our humble "Earth" (5/3.); first an ocean of fire, rolling its
heavy waves of molten porphyry and granite, then "slowly hardening into
strange floes and bergs, hotter than the red iron in the fire of the
forge," rounding its back, all covered with gaping pustules, eruptive
mountains and craters, and the first folds of its calcined crust, until the
day when the vast mist of densest vapours, heaped up on every hand and of
immeasurable depth, begins gradually to show rifts, giving rise at last to
an infinite storm, a stupendous deluge, and forming the strange universal
sea, "a mineral sludge, veiled by a chaos of smoke," whence at length the
primitive soil emerges, "and at last the green grass."
And although "a little animal proteid, capable of pleasure and pain,
surpasses in interest the whole immense creation of dead matter," he does
not forget to show us the spectacle of life flowing through matter itself;
and he animates even the simple elementary bodies, celebrating the
marvellous activities of the air, the violence of Chlorine, the
metamorphoses of Carbon, the miraculous bridals of Phosphorus, and "the
splendours which accompany the birth of a drop of water." (5/4.)
A man must indeed love knowledge deeply before he can make others love it,
or render it easy and attractive, revealing only the smiling highways; and
Fabre, above all things the impassioned professor, was the very man to lead
his disciples "between the hedges of hawthorn and sloe," whether to show
them the sap, "that fruitful current, that flowing flesh, that vegetable
blood," or how the plant, by a mysterious transubstantiation, makes its
wood, "and the delicate bundle of swaddling-bands of its buds," or how
"from a putrid ordure it extracts the flavour and the fragrance of its
fruits"; or whether he seeks to evoke the murderous plants that live as
parasites at the cost of others; the white Clandestinus, "which strangles
the roots of the alders beside the rivers," the Cuscuta, "which knows
nothing of labour," the wicked Orobanche, plump, powerful and brazen, the
skin covered with ugly scales, "with sombre flowers that wear the livery of
death, which leaps at the throat of the clover, stifling it, devouring it,
sucking its blood." (5/5.)
Botany, by this genial treatment, becomes a most interesting study, and I
know of no more captivating reading than "The Plant" and "The Story of the
Log," the jewels of this incomparable series.
Employ Fabre's method if you wish to learn by yourself, or to evoke in your
children a love of science, and, according to the phrase of the gentle
Jean-Jacques, to help them "to buy at the best possible of prices." Give
them as sole guides these exquisite manuals, which touch upon everything,
initiating them into everything, and bringing within the reach of all, for
their instruction or amusement, the heavens and the earth, the planets and
their moons, the mechanism of the great natural forces and the laws which
govern them, life and its materials, agriculture and its applications. For
more than a quarter of a century these catechisms of science, models of
lucidity and good sense, effected the education of generations of
Frenchmen. Abridgments of all knowledge, veritable codes of rural wisdom,
these perfect breviaries have never been surpassed.
It was after reading these little books, it is said, that Duruy conceived
the idea of confiding to this admirable teacher the education of the
Imperial heir; and it is very probable that this was, in reality, the
secret motive which would explain why he had so expressly summoned Fabre to
Paris. What an ideal tutor he had thought of, and how proud might others
have been of such a choice! But the man was too zealous of his
independence, too difficult to tame, to bear with the environment of a
court, and God knows whether he was made for such refulgence! We need not
be surprised that Fabre never heard of it; it must have sufficed the
minister to speak with him for a few minutes to realize that the most
tempting offers and all the powers of seduction would never overcome his
insurmountable dislike of life in a capital, nor prevail against his
inborn, passionate, exclusive love of the open.
For these volumes Fabre was at first rather wretchedly paid; at all events,
until public education had definitely received a fresh impulse; and for a
long time his life at Orange was literally a hand-to-mouth existence.
As soon as he was able to realize a few advances, he had nothing so much at
heart as the repayment of Mill, and he hastened to call on the philosopher;
all the more filled with gratitude for his generosity in that the loan,
although of the comparatively large amount of three thousand francs, was
made without security, practically from hand to hand, with no other
warranty than his probity.
For this reason this episode was always engraven on his memory. Thirty
years later he would relate the affair even to the most insignificant
details. How many times has he not reminded me of the transaction,
insisting that I should make a note of it, so anxious was he that this
incident in his career should not be lost in oblivion! How often has he not
recalled the infinite delicacy of Mill, and his excessive scrupulousness,
which went so far that he wished to give a written acknowledgment of the
repayment of the debt, of which there was no record whatever save in the
conscience of the debtor!
Scarcely two years later Mill died suddenly at Avignon. Grief finally
killed him; for this unexpected death seemed to have been only the ultimate
climax of the secret malady which had so long been undermining him.
It was in the outskirts of Orange that Fabre for the last time met him and
accompanied him upon a botanizing expedition. He was struck by his weakness
and his rapid decline. Mill could hardly drag himself along, and when he
stooped to gather a specimen he had the greatest difficulty in rising. They
were never to meet again.
A few days later--on the 8th May, 1873--Fabre was invited to lunch with the
philosopher. Before going to the little house by the cemetery he halted, as
was his custom, at the Libraire Saint-Just. It was there that he learned,
with amazement, of the tragic and sudden event which set a so unexpected
term to a friendship which was doubtless a little remote, but which was, on
both sides, a singularly lofty and beautiful attachment.
His class-books were now bringing in scarcely anything; their preparation,
moreover, involved an excessive expenditure of time, and gave him a great
deal of trouble; it is impossible to imagine what scrupulous care, what
zeal and self-respect Fabre brought to the execution of the programme which
he had to fulfil.
To begin with, he considered that he could not enjoy a more splendid
opportunity to give children a taste for science and to stimulate their
curiosity than by finding a means to interest them, from their earliest
infancy, in their simple playthings, even the crudest and most inexpensive;
so true is it that "in the smallest mechanical device or engine, even in
its simplest form, as conceived by the industry of a child, there is often
the germ of important truths, and, better than books, the school of the
playroom, if gently disciplined, will open for the child the windows of the
universe."
"The humble teetotum, made of a crust of rye-bread transfixed by a twig,
silently spinning on the cover of a school-book, will give a correct enough
image of the earth, which retains unmoved its original impulse, and travels
along a great circle, at the same time turning on itself. Gummed on its
disc, scraps of paper properly coloured will tell us of white light,
decomposable into various coloured rays...
"There will be the pop-gun, with its ramrod and its two plugs of tow, the
hinder one expelling the foremost by the elasticity of the compressed air.
Thus we get a glimpse of the ballistics of gunpowder, and the pressure of
steam in engines..."
The little hydraulic fountain made of an apricot stone, patiently hollowed
and pierced with a hole at either side, into which two straws are fitted,
one dipping into a cup of water and the other duly capped, "expelling a
slender thread of water in which the sunlight flickers," will introduce us
to the true syphon of physics.
"What amusing and useful lessons" a well-balanced scheme of education might
extract from this "academy of childish ingenuity"! (5/6.)
At this time he was undertaking the education of his own children. His
chemistry lessons especially had a great success. (5/7.) With apparatus of
his own devising and of the simplest kind, he could perform a host of
elementary experiments, the apparatus as a rule consisting of the most
ordinary materials, such as a common flask or bottle, an old mustard-pot, a
tumbler, a goose-quill or a pipe-stem.
A series of astonishing phenomena amazed their wondering eyes. He made them
see, touch, taste, handle, and smell, and always "the hand assisted the
word," always "the example accompanied the precept," for no one more fully
valued the profound maxim, so neglected and misunderstood, that "to see is
to know."
He exerted himself to arouse their curiosity, to provoke their questions,
to discover their mistakes, to set their ideas in order; he accustomed them
to rectify their errors themselves, and from all this he obtained excellent
material for his books.
For those more especially intended for the education of girls he took
counsel with his daughter Antonia, inviting her collaboration, begging her
to suggest every aspect of the matter that occurred to her; for instance,
in respect of the chemistry of the household, "where exact science should
shed its light upon a host of facts relating to domestic economy" (5/8.),
from the washing of clothes to the making of a stew.
Even now, to his despair, although freed from the cares of school life, he
was always almost wholly without leisure to devote himself to his chosen
subjects.
It was at this period above all that he felt so "lonely, abandoned,
struggling against misfortune; and before one can philosophize one has to
live." (5/9.)
And his incessant labour was aggravated by a bitter disappointment. In the
year of Mill's death Fabre was dismissed from his post as conservator of
the Requien Museum, which he had held in spite of his departure from
Avignon, going thither regularly twice a week to acquit himself of his
duties. The municipality, working in the dark, suddenly dismissed him
without explanation. To Fabre this dismissal was infinitely bitter; "a
sweeper-boy would have been treated with as much ceremony." (5/10.) What
afflicted him most was not the undeserved slight of the dismissal, but his
unspeakable regret at quitting those beloved vegetable collections,
"amassed with such love" by Requien, who was his friend and master, and by
Mill and himself; and the thought that he would henceforth perhaps be
unable to save these precious but perishable things from oblivion, or
terminate the botanical geography of Vaucluse, on which he had been thirty
years at work!
For this reason, when there was some talk of establishing an agronomic
station at Avignon, and of appointing him director, he was at first warmly
in favour of the idea. (5/11.) Already he foresaw a host of fascinating
experiments, of the highest practical value, conducted in the peace and
leisure and security of a fixed appointment. It is indeed probable that in
so vast a field he would have demonstrated many valuable truths, fruitful
in practical results; he was certainly meant for such a task, and he would
have performed it with genuine personal satisfaction. He had already
exerted his ingenuity by trying to develop, among the children of the
countryside, a taste for agriculture, which he rightly considered the
logical complement of the primary school, and which is based upon all the
sciences which he himself had studied, probed, taught, and popularized.
It will be remembered how patiently he devoted himself for twelve years to
the study of madder, multiplying his researches, and applying himself not
only to extracting the colouring principle, but also to indicating means
whereby adulteration and fraud might be detected.
He had published memoirs of great importance dealing with entomology in its
relations to agriculture. Impressed with the importance of this little
world, he suggested valuable remedies, means of preservation; which were
all the more logical in that the destruction of insects, if it is to be
efficacious, must be based not upon a gross empiricism, but on a previous
study of their social life and their habits.
With what patience he observed the terribly destructive weevils, and those
formidable moths with downy wings, which fly without sound of a night, and
whose depredations have often been valued at millions of francs! How
meticulously he has recorded the conditions which favour or check the
development of those parasitic fungi whose mortal blemishes are seen on
buds and flowers, on the green shoots and clusters that promise a
prosperous vintage!
But then he became anxious. Was it all worth the sacrifice of his liberty?
"Would he not suffer a thousand annoyances from pretentious nobodies?" for
as things were, all ideas of again "enregimenting" himself "filled him with
horror." (5/12.)
Slowly, however, the first instalment of the work which he had spent nearly
twenty-five years in planning, creating, and polishing, began to take
shape. At the end of the year 1878 he was able to assemble a sufficient
number of studies to form material for what was to be the first volume of
his "Souvenirs entomologiques." (A selection of which forms "Social Life in
the Insect World" (T. Fisher Unwin, 1912).)
Let us stop for a moment to consider this first book, whose publication
constitutes a truly historical date, not only in the career of Fabre, but
in the annals of universal science. It was at once the foundation and the
keystone of the marvellous edifice which we shall watch unfolding and
increasing, but to which the future was in reality to add nothing
essential. The cardinal ideas as to instinct and evolution, the necessity
of experimenting in the psychology of animals, and the harmonic laws of the
conservation of the individual, are here already expounded in their final
and definite form. This fruitful and decisive year brought Fabre a great
grief. He lost his son Jules, that one of all his children whom he seems
most ardently to have loved.
He was a youth of great promise, "all fire, all flame"; of a serious
nature; an exquisite being, of a precocious intelligence, whose rare
aptitudes both for science and literature were truly extraordinary. Such
too was the subtlety of his senses that by handling no matter what plant,
with his eyes closed, he could recognize and define it merely by the sense
of touch. This delightful companion of his father's studies had scarcely
passed his fifteenth year when death removed him. A terrible void was left
in his heart, which was never filled. Thirty years later the least allusion
to this child, however tactful, which recalled this dear memory to his
mind, would still wring his heart, and his whole body would be shaken by
his sobs. As always, work was his refuge and consolation; but this terrible
blow shattered his health, until then so robust. In the midst of this
disastrous winter he fell seriously ill. He was stricken with pneumonia,
which all but carried him off, and every one gave him up for lost. However,
he recovered, and issued from his convalescence as though regenerated, and
with strength renewed he attacked the next stage of his labours.
But what are the most fruitful resolutions, and what poor playthings are we
in the hands of the unexpected! A vulgar incident of every-day life had
sufficed to make Fabre decide to break openly with the University, and to
leave Avignon. The secret motive of his departure from Orange was scarcely
more solid. His new landlord concluded one day, either from cupidity or
stupidity, to lop most ferociously the two magnificent rows of plane-trees
which formed a shady avenue before his house, in which the birds piped and
warbled in the spring, and the cicadae chorused in the summer. Fabre could
not endure this massacre, this barbarous mutilation, this crime against
nature. Hungry for peace and quiet, the enjoyment of a dwelling-place could
no longer content him; at all costs he must own his own home.
So, having won the modest ransom of his deliverance, he waited no longer,
but quitted the cities for ever; retiring to Sérignan, to the peaceful
obscurity of a tiny hamlet, and this quiet corner of the earth had
henceforth all his heart and soul in keeping.